December 08, 2016
That would have been an appropriate headline for the NYT piece profiling Andrew Puzder, Donald Trump’s pick to be head of the Labor Department. According to the piece, Puzder, who runs a restaurant chain:
“…strongly supports repealing the Affordable Care Act, which he maintains has helped create a ‘restaurant recession’ because rising premiums have left middle- and working-class people with less money to spend dining out.”
In fact, restaurant spending and employment have risen rapidly since the key provisions of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) took effect in January of 2014 as shown in the figure below.
Source: Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Employment in restaurants in the most recent data is nearly 1 million higher than in December of 2013, the month before the health care exchanges created by the ACA began operating. Clearly Mr. Puzder is badly confused about business conditions in the restaurant sector. It would have been appropriate to point this fact out to readers, especially since it is very relevant to the job of the Labor Secretary.
Note: Thanks to Robert Salzberg for calling this to my attention.
Comments